Silverman: How deeply do we value America’s diversity?

By Eric Silverman/Guest Columnist

Monday

Jul 9, 2018 at 4:44 AM

Americans of all stripes come together every Independence Day to celebrate a diffuse sense of communal belonging. The barbecue grill is indifferent as to whether the burgers you’re flipping are Bubba from Wal-Mart or kosher, halal, and vegy. It’s not July 4th that’s a problem; it’s the other 364 days of the year, when many of us grapple with what it means to be an American and something else. How do we acknowledge a nation of hyphenated identities?

As it turns out, not very well.

The national calendar now honors more heritages and differences than we have months. On paper, we revel in pluribus as much as unum.

But not equally for all. Take American Jews, for example. The alt-right would have you believe that we are alien to the country. But Jews are as woven into the fabric of the nation as any other ethnic group, preceding even the signing of the Declaration of Independence we just celebrated.

And yet, five centuries later, our identity remains unsettled. This past May, and every May before it for more than two decades, was Jewish American Heritage Month. Did you know? Did your neighbors? That’s my point.

As far as I know, neither our public schools nor city officials took notice. How about the governor or State House? Bupkis, as we say in Yiddish. Not so much as a photo op with a pastrami sandwich. Even Hallmark, which hardly misses any opportunity to hawk sentimentality, forgot to stock the mall with suitably-themed greeting cards.

Jews, like many other ethnic groups, are given a full month of recognition. In reality, we barely get a few minutes of the national attention span.

In our current climate of racial strife, culture clashing, and fraught debates over diversity, it seems not only unjust for the moment to pass but a lost opportunity to reflect on who we are as a nation - not the nation of our collective fantasies every July 4th but the nation we live the rest of the year.

The neglect of Jewish American Heritage Month raises grave questions of concern to us all. In multicultural America, whose voice is heard? What ethnic group is worthy of official recognition? Who matters? Or should we dissolve our cultural differences, no matter how dear, in a melting pot as bland and colorless as Wonder Bread? That we parcel the national calendar into ethnic celebrations suggests that we do value diversity. But in practice, as the silence that greeted Jewish Americans this past May suggests, we are not so sure.

Or is something else at play here. To the right of the political spectrum, Jews have always been unwelcome outsiders. Decent Americans? God forbid. How else can we make sense of an avowedly anti-Semitic candidate in California last week receiving enough primary votes to appear on the ballot for general election? Talk about a microaggression.

The left was once rather more welcoming of Jews, who were prominent in the labor and civil rights movements. No longer, in large measure due to the singular demonization of Israel while morally whitewashing the gassing of civilians in Syria, say, ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, and China confining its Uighurs to Orwellian re-education camps. Since most American Jews can ‘pass,’ moreover, we are scapegoated as a fifth column, traitors to the liberal cause, uniquely answerable for American racism. Worse, Jewishness is made to be a fraudulent form of identity. We do not, again, belong.

Jewish Americans are the canary in the coal mines of multiculturalism and nationalism. What happens to our identity may later happen to yours. Just ask the Muslim or immigrant family down the street. You can wave all the flags you want, on every Independence Day. That does not make you a welcome or welcoming American. What does is how you are treated after the Fourth of July - and how you treat others who sometimes wave banners different from your own.

Let’s see what happens next year.

Eric Silverman is an anthropologist, a resident of Framingham and a former School Committee member, and a scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University.

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